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Olá, lovelies!
I’m Christina.
Here at Weekday Pescatarian, we are mastering easy and impressive pescatarian cuisine. And sometimes we talk about life as an American in Portugal.
Thanks for coming along for the ride. 🐟
The place I call home:
Cascais, Portugal (outside Lisbon)
My experience in the kitchen...and at the keyboard:
I spent the better part of two decades as a marketing and communications consultant. Before that, my endless curiosity was put to good use as a local reporter. And before that, I honed my food obsession as a restaurant trainer.
Since launching Weekday Pescatarian in 2021, my recipes and seafood expertise have been featured on CNNHealth, MSN, Pip and Ebby, Savoring the Good, Eat Blog Talk and more.
My cooking philosophy...
Easy + Impressive. We all need quick, nutritious, grab-and-go meals. But my first goal when cooking is to create impressive flavors. I’m willing to put in extra time and effort if I can wrangle a little more flavor or texture or pleasure out of a bite. The recipes on Weekday Pescatarian are tested over and over to find a balance between easy and impressive.
Lay-ah tha flav-ah. That’s right, friends. Cooking seafood, vegetables, ANYTHING, requires us to learn how to layer flavor into our dishes. After a couple of decades traveling and taking culinary classes from chefs in Paris and home cooks in Marrakech, learning to make Portuguese feijoada in Porto and Bacalhau in Lisbon, I have learned many important cooking principles. Chief among them is that most of us home cooks under season our dishes.
The recipes you see here will almost always encourage you to season throughout the preparation process, and at least once, prompt you to “taste and adjust seasoning”. Cooking presents too many variables (freshness of ingredients, seasonality, spiciness of individual peppers, just to name a few) for a recipe to present a one-size-fits-all solution.
Nostalgic. I love how food can elicit intense nostalgia. The smell of paprika, onions and butter takes me to my grandmother’s kitchen as she stands over a vat of Hungarian goulash, her deep, joyful cackle filling the linoleum-lined room.
The sticky, caramelized edges of a sliced sweet potato sizzling in butter and covered in brown sugar puts me at my mother’s side every Thanksgiving morning of my young life, with the Macy’s parade blaring in the background.
The pungent, savory freshness of ginger scallion sauce lands me at a hawker stall in Singapore with my husband, mesmerized by the chaotic symphony life moving around me.
Recreating these dishes brings so much joy to my life. I am constantly on the lookout for capturing new food nostalgia that I’ll carry into my next decade.
Some of my favorite recipes so far include:
What I'm doing when I'm not writing recipes and cooking
Traveling (28 countries and counting!) and learning about new-to-me cultures slowly and deeply and especially through food. Hiking, especially oceanside. Reading (or modern-day reading aka podcasting.)
Hosting friends for a long Sunday brunch or putting on a last-minute Tuesday night dinner party…cooking for and eating with people fills me with joy.
I also speak and write with an abnormal amount of ellipses…let’s pretend it’s normal.
Why I became the Weekday Pescatarian
In 2021 I watched an old Ted Talk from Graham Hill about his decision to transition to a weekday vegetarian diet.
I share his view that so many lifestyle diets present a binary choice that requires a high level of commitment and restriction. Can I swear off birria tacos forever? Have I already eaten my last fried chicken sandwich?
The second driving factor came when my husband and I moved to Lisbon in 2021. We had long contemplated living in Europe, and the middle of a global pandemic seemed as good a time as any to make the leap.
After 9 months in the city center of Lisbon, we moved 15 miles outside the city to the seaside village of Cascais. For the first time in my life, I was living on the ocean with daily access to fresh fish. I was already an adventurous eater and confident cook, but these life changes presented a new opportunity.
And so, Weekday Pescatarian was born.
My goals were simple:
- Increase my intake of seafood.
- Grow my comfort level with cooking seafood at home.
- Improve my health in a sustainable way.
I’m not fanatical about the calendar. I assume Thanksgiving will continue to fall on the last Thursday in November. And you better believe my plate will include turkey. Practicing a weekday pescatarian lifestyle gives me the flexibility to meet my goals without the baggage of restriction.
Are you trying to turn everyone into a Weekday Pescatarian?
Heck, no. I’m anti-fanatical. I’m fanatical about NOT being fanatical.
This lifestyle works for me. For my geography, my season of life and my goals.
You find what works for you. If you’re already doing Meatless Monday, maybe you can add Fish Friday to your weekly meal plan. How about Tuna Tuesday? Walleye Wednesday? Salmon Sunday?
Or, you could just browse some delectable recipes and mouthwatering photos, cook a few, impress the heck out of your family and friends, and keep coming back for more. No commitment required.
See you soon…